Admit it, you were excited when the Dallas Cowboys hit the reset button on their defensive coaching staff last year. The love we once had for Rod Marinelli and Kris Richard had reached it's limit. They weren't dreadful defensively, but the unit was clearly holding this team back. They struggled to take the ball away, they were middling at best, and when we needed them to come through with a stop, more times than not - they just didn't have it in them. Alas, it was time to make a change.
When Mike McCarthy brought with him Mike Nolan, it came with the newness of something different. It was hard not to be a little enthused about what he could add to the defense. But as we quickly learned, the new schemes and personnel decisions thrown together last offseason were too much for this group to grasp, causing the team to give up a franchise worst 473 points. Change for the sake of change isn't always better.
That's why it's understandable if some people are a little apprehensive about the fresh new leadership of Dan Quinn. A new hire offers no guarantees. From a talent perspective, the Cowboys still have a lot of shaky players on defense that need upgrades. The constant shuffling of defensive projects of players who fit a coaches "type" seems like a never ending process with the most recent crop falling in line with what Quinn desires - long and fast.
Will Quinn and these new defensive additions provide what it takes for the Cowboys to be successful? The answer to that question is a big old TBD as there is no way to know if this ensemble will give them the answers they've been so desperately looking for on defense. But there are some things that we do know, and that will be my focus today as we try to determine if the Quinn hire is really worth getting excited about.
For starters, Quinn was a coach out of work. He had a nice first three seasons with the Atlanta Falcons, including a Super Bowl appearance during the 2016 season. But then he had two-straight 7-9 seasons and started last year 0-5 before being fired. While the Falcons had a short little run there, their success came on the heels of their high powered offense. Atlanta finished with the top offense in the league during their Super Bowl season. It's not very reassuring that the person the Cowboys are bringing in to fix the defense just got through overseeing a very terrible unit in Atlanta.
At the same time, it's important to understand a couple things. The most important factor to consider is the Falcons front office did very little to put talent on the field when it came to their defense. Similar to Dallas, the resources the Falcons used is considerably lopsided in terms of offense versus defense. To be fair to Quinn, they really didn't give him a lot to work with.
The second factor is that being a great coordinator and being a great head coach do not go hand in hand. Wade Phillips is a good example of this. He was highly regarded as a great DC over the years, but couldn't achieve that same level of success as a head coach. Even when some thought the game had passed him by after stalling as the head coach in Dallas, he turned around and helped two different teams (Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Rams) reach the Super Bowl as their defensive coodinator, including a championship in 2015. If Quinn was brought in as the Cowboys head coach, the excitement level should be next to nothing. But he's not. He's coming over to do what he knows best, and that's to fix the defense.
While those factors serve as reasons to be neither excited or discouraged about Quinn being the new defensive coordinator, there are some actual reasons to be happy about him being in Dallas.
When the Cowboys went from Marinelli to Nolan they went from vanilla to complex. With Quinn, the team gets a little bit of both. He will install a more simplistic defensive scheme that won't require his players to think on their toes. Instead, players will have a more direct plan of attack and unleash their athletic ability.
This may make them more predictable on the surface, but the versatility of his defensive playmakers will offer a little flexibility with what they're capable of doing. This new unit will feature a myriad of players with hybrid ability. For example, the linebacker group has added two new draft picks with exceptional speed in Micah Parsons and Jabril Cox as well as a strong safety-turned-LB in Keanu Neal. These players will be added run stoppers, but also have the speed to drift about in coverage.
Speaking of coverage, the team's young outside corners fit nicely into Quinn's Cover 3 scheme. Both Trevon Diggs and Kelvin Joseph are susceptible when it comes to route recognition and have tendencies to react in haste, yet at the same time both are great at closing fast and making plays on the ball. Having these guys play off a bit and react to the quarterback versus mirroring receivers is going to play to their strengths and sidestep their weaknesses.
Of course, the back seven won't be effective if the Cowboys can't generate pressure in the trenches. It's hard to know how the defensive line arrangement will shape out, but there are a lot of promising players in the mix. Young interior lineman like Trysten Hill, Neville Gallimore and the recently drafted Osa Odighizuwa to go along with outside edge rushers like DeMarcus Lawrence, Randy Gregory, and the recently drafted Chauncey Golston all provide a potpourri of traits the coaching staff can play with to find the maximum result.
We don't know how this will all play out, but it's really hard not to be excited about what Quinn can do with this group. Barring some unfortunate health setback (knock on wood), the Cowboys offense should be explosive. Kellen Moore and all his weapons are going to put up points, so the Cowboys defense don't have to be spectacular. They just have to be effective at times, and hopefully they'll eventually grow into a unit that can be counted on to show up and make plays.
Be excited for this defense because these are exciting times.
